FBI: Driverless cars are 'lethal weapons,' aid in suspect getaways

A restricted FBI report, uncovered by The Guardian, reveals that driverless cars will impact how law enforcement officers and suspects operate their vehicles.

In the unclassified document, these "lethal weapons" can be programmed to use as getaway vehicles while suspects fire guns at their pursuers, for example. Criminals could override safety features to ignore traffic lights and speed limits, and terrorists could load up these cars with bombs and program them to drive to detonate at specific locations.

On the other hand, autonomous vehicles could be "game-changing" for police officers. Surveillance will be "made more effective and easier, with less of a chance that a patrol car will lose sight of a target vehicle," the report claims. Driverless cars may be programmed to remain a certain distance behind targets to avoid detection.

Featured Topics

The enactment of the Federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), coupled with the passage of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), has transformed how health information is handled and created strict guidelines regarding how much of a patient's medical record can be viewed...

Human factors involves the application of what we know about people, their abilities, characteristics, and limitations to the design of equipment they use, environments in which they function, and jobs they perform. Human factors is a multi-disciplinary field grounded in the behavioral and engineering sciences, synonymous with ergonomics where engineering...